"One and a Half Hours Earlier"
"I dunno, man." P.J. nervously spoke out to Kuzco. "If Dr. Spengler finds out that we've been messin' around with the equipment…"
"Relax," said the nonchalant Kuzco, who was much too preoccupied with suiting up in one of the uniforms that he had taken from Dr. Venkman's locker upstairs and strapping the remarkably heavy Proton Pack on his back and a pair of Ecto-Goggles to his head. "By the time they get back from whatever it is they're doing, they won't even realize we were here."
Max Goof rubbed his fingers through his hair, exchanging nervous glances with P.J. and wondering along with him if what they were about to do was such a good idea. There the three of them were, grouped together near the Containment System, while all of the other recruits were getting situated upstairs and waiting to train for the program in the proper way. They had only been recruited for a mere couple of hours, and Kuzco was already equipped with Ghostbuster technology.
As the young emperor approached the Containment Unit, he glanced at it closely, noting the huge array of blinking buttons, switches, and indicators to things that might as well have been Greek to him. I bet Yzma would have a field day with all this "techy" stuff, he thought.
"C'mon, dude!" Max exclaimed. "You haven't got the slightest clue what you're doing!"
Kuzco was about to make a retort, until he stopped and spotted the same keypad that Dr. Spengler dialed during the demonstration earlier. "Ah-ha! Here we go!" However, despite the self-assured tone in his voice, he really had no clue where to go from there. Yes, it was the keypad that Dr. Spengler used; but he totally missed the sequence of numbers he entered, due to being too focused on Malina at the time.
For a moment, he just stood there and gawked at the keypad, as if whatever was supposed to happen would happen on its own. Max and P.J. groaned, with Max going as far as slapping his forehead and rubbing his face in frustration. "Well, what're you waitin' for? Put in the code!"
"Uh, right…right…the code. I knew that." Kuzco did his best to make his fellow recruits believe that he knew what to do. After all, he was emperor of his own land and could do just about anything he pleased.
Technology, on the other hand, was a completely different scenario.
Hoping for the best, Kuzco dialed in six numbers, just like Dr. Spengler did. These numbers, of course, were simply "1," "2," "3," "4," "5," and "6" (the order of numbers he often used for the collection of safes in his palace). He knew that Dr. Spengler entered a code far more complex than that. But he would have to figure this particular one was somewhere on the list, since even Ghostbusters could easily forget things with all of the busy work they had to deal with on a daily basis.
A wave of satisfaction flowed through the young emperor, once he noticed the slot opening itself. He grinned as he folded his arms and watched for the bright purple light to shoot out and materialize a ghost for him to capture. Unfortunately, after a minute or two, nothing happened…and Kuzco was left looking like a big fool in front of Max and P.J.
"Come on, you stupid machiney!" He angrily shouted, banging his fists against the machine like he would on a vending machine with a candy bar stuck in it. "Gimme my ghost-thing to trap!"
He kept pounding the machine, making loud and hollow noises that echoed through the room, as well as up the stairs. It attracted the attention of Alex and Justin Russo, who were passing through the reception area to check out more of the Ghostbusters headquarters. They headed downstairs to the basement, and when they saw Kuzco hitting the highly nuclear Containment Unit (while wearing equally nuclear equipment), their eyes widened with fear.
"What're you doing?!" Justin cried.
Max and P.J. turned and looked to see two of the Russo siblings staring suspiciously at them, and although they weren't part of the Ghostbusters staff, they still felt like they just got busted. However, Kuzco didn't feel like there was anything he needed to hide, so he just honestly admitted, "What does it look like? I'm tryin' to free a ghost."
Alex exchanged an awkward glance with Justin and said, "Okay…why?"
"Because I want to prove to these jokers that even an amateur can handle this line of work," said the young emperor, before he went back to hitting the machine.
"Could you please stop doing that? It's like hitting an atom bomb!" Justin warned Kuzco, even though he had no clue how the machine worked—he mostly just went by all the caution signs posted around the basement.
Taking this order from Justin was the last thing Kuzco wanted, so he continued his drastic action with more ferocity. "Unless you know how to pop a spooky from this thing, I suggest you back…"
EEENNNHHH!! EEENNNHHH!! EEENNNHHH!! EEENNNHHH!!
The buzzing alarm that came over the room was a bad sign. But the red lights that went on, replacing the regular ones that partially illuminated the room, were an even horrible sign that something went wrong. Kuzco immediately stopped hitting the machine upon hearing the alarm. This was exactly the mess that he was trying to avoid while down there.
"Uh…I say we just slowly back away, walk out of here, and pretend that none of us were even here." Alex suggested.
"I'm cool with that plan." P.J. acknowledged.
"Me, too." Max added himself in.
"Ditto." Kuzco agreed.
They were just on their way towards the stairs, until they were suddenly confronted by Christina, who stood near the top of the stairs with her hands on her hips and a peeved look on her face. And seeing that look, which equaled the look his dad often gave him and Alex, Justin pointed directly to the others and boldly declared, "This was all them! I had no part in this whatsoever!"
Right at that moment, there was a huge humming sound from the Containment System that was strong enough to heavily vibrate sections of the basement. Even Christina felt the vibrations through the rail on the stairs, and her look of anger was quickly replaced with one of caution as she asked, "What in blazes did you guys do down here?!"
"Kuzco tried to free a ghost from the machine, like Dr. Spengler did." Max freely ratted, much to the dismay of Kuzco.
"Ya know, just for that, you can forget about being part of my future team!" The young emperor retorted.
Christina rushed past the recruits and went to the Containment Unit's keypad. "Which code did you enter, Kuzco?"
"I entered six digits, just like Spengler did."
"Yeah, but which digits did you enter?!" Christina urgently inquired.
Kuzco rolled his eyes and pouted. "I entered the numbers one, two, three, four, five, and six."
The cautious look on Christina's face intensified upon hearing the numbers Kuzco spat out. "You didn't enter them in that one order, did you?!"
"Of course," he said, "I'm not Tom Cruise from that weird spy movie with he wears those funny, realistic masks of old, elderly people. Or, wait…am I thinking about his makeup job in Tropic Thunder? No, no! I'm thinking of the spy movie. He was just funny in Tropic Thun…"
The young emperor was quickly cut short, as soon as Christina grabbed him by the collar and pulled him closer to her, so she could glare straight into his eyes while she ranted off. "You moron! The Containment Unit has a sensitive alarm system! Entering the most random code could lead to a massive purge of all the ghosts from the machine!"
Kuzco just stared blankly at her, taken aback by all of what she told him. "Okay…and as a secretary, you know all of this, because…?"
Infuriated even more by his sexist remark, Christina shoved the naïve emperor away from her and focused on re-entering the normal code to overwrite the one that Kuzco entered. While doing so, the machine was already in the process of releasing one particular ghost, as that same purple light emitted from it and began materializing a bulbous, disfigured form at the center of the room.
Once it was fully completed, Alex quickly realized that the ghost that had been freed from the machine was the same one the Ghostbusters encountered at Pizza Planet last year. It was the green, slimy, onion-headed ghost that Dr. Venkman so religiously despised, every time she saw it near her. And because of that, it was Dr. Stantz who decided one day to name the ghost "Slimer," just for the fun of irritating her.
"Oh, man! I think we're in a nasty heap of trouble!" Alex exclaimed.
Kuzco excitedly grinned, seeing the slimy ghost floating there in front of them. "Aw, yeah! Now you're about to see a beginner go at it!" He lowered the Ecto-Goggles over his eyes, getting a decent "night vision" view of the specter through them.
As Christina was still overwriting the code, she looked behind her to see Kuzco detaching the particle thrower from the Proton Pack and aiming it right at Slimer. It was worse enough that he was responsible for all of this; but it was terrible to see him make it horrible by attempting to amateurishly "bust" a ghost.
Before she could've stopped him, he already fired at Slimer, with a stream so powerful that he was literally sent flying back into the wall. It hit nowhere near Slimer but rather scared him, as he flew higher up and phased through the ceiling, leaving behind a large pool of ectoplasmic residue to drip over the group.
"I told ya this was a bad idea, man!!" P.J. cried, as he and Max grabbed Kuzco and his particle thrower, trying their best to maintain some control over both.
Alex and Justin both ducked, once they saw how the protonic stream was coming in their direction. It connected with several parts of the basement area, scorching the caution signs and teal-colored plaster on the walls. Luckily, it had not hit any of the equipment stashed in the room, especially the work-in-progress that was Sean Spengler's advanced Proton Pack.
In the meantime, the pressured Christina Melnitz was doing her best to stay focused on entering the code into the keypad. However, between the destruction that Kuzco was causing and an escaped ghost roaming through the firehouse headquarters (unbeknownst to the other recruits upstairs), it was hard to focus much on anything. And to make matters worse, the machine began releasing four more ghosts. Fortunately, they were lower-classed ghosts like Slimer. But the unfortunate part was the fact that they were the same four ghosts Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and Goofy encountered while serving as Ajax Ghost Exterminators a long time ago. And only recently had they earned a spot on the Ghostbusters' captured list, after the fiasco at Pizza Planet in the previous year.
These "Lonesome Ghosts," as Mickey nicknamed them a while back (due to their need of company and fun), were more than delighted to finally be free from the Containment Unit. They heartily laughed while floating in the air, especially when seeing the chaotic situation that the mortals below them were in. As soon as they had gotten bored watching them, they floated higher above to the ceiling. When they spotted the familiar residue, it was right then that their delight increased, realizing how their new slimy friend was there as well.
After the Lonesome Ghosts departed from the basement, Christina finally entered the code to overwrite Kuzco's lame one and close up the machine, preventing any further releases. She then went to where Kuzco was still having a difficult time controlling the Proton Gun, even with the assistance of P.J. and Max Goof. It was the knowledge she had earned from those years of being tutored by Spengler that helped her see exactly where she needed to touch, in order to shut down the Proton Pack. Between the light indicators for level of temporal overheating and stream intensity, there was a scanner reserved for "Immediate Shutdown Only" and could be activated just through scanning fingerprint DNA of any Ghostbusters staff member, including Christina.
Once she allowed her index finger to be scanned, Kuzco's Proton Pack went into immediate shutdown, with his powerful protonic stream slowly decreasing the point that it had totally vanished. Kuzco, Max, and P.J. all fell to the floor, exhausted and even embarrassed from what just occurred. Christina passed right by them, her infuriated look returned, as she pointed her finger directly at Kuzco.
"You've got some heavy-duty punishment comin' your way pretty soon, punk!" The sternness in her voice was enough to scare Kuzco straight, despite the grinning expression on his face.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!
The shriek came from upstairs, where the escaped ghosts headed and were undoubtedly scaring the wits out of the other recruits. Christina went up there with Alex and Justin at her side, and once they reached the reception area, they found half of the recruits (Zack, Cody, Kronk, and Malina) rushing downstairs in a great deal of fright. Kronk was still shrieking like a girl, contradicting Christina's thoughts on whether it might have been one of the girls.
"There is some big, nasty thing causing a big funk up there in the girls' room!" Malina yelled.
"Anything's better than what was in our room!" Cody quivered.
"Yeah, on the way down, I think one of them spanked me with a wooden board." Zack said, while rubbing his sore behind.
They suddenly heard the hollowed, eerie cackling from further upstairs, following the loud screams of the other recruits there. Christina knew this was too great of a problem to handle on her own, so she went to her desk and picked up the phone, dialing one of the emergency cell phone numbers they had listed—the first one being Alexis Embers's.
"Wow. You know we're in serious trouble, if a Ghostbuster is calling another Ghostbuster." Zack commented.
"Yeah…weird," uttered an extremely hoarse Kronk.